USA > Maryland > Talbot County > History of Talbot county, Maryland, 1661-1861, Volume I > Part 58
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69
Mr. Robert Ungle of whom this lady was the relict, though leav- ing no children nor kinsmen to perpetuate his name,3 has secured a tra- ditionary memory through the tragic circumstances of his death and the ghostly legends to which it gave origin. He was known in his
2 This Phineas Alferino was a native of Florence in Italy and a butcher. Men- tion is made in the records of Talbot County of his naturalization under the date of April 29, 1736.
3 The family of Ungles no longer has representatives in this county, but un- doubtedly at the period referred to in the text there were other persons besides Mr. Robert Ungle of the name-one was Thomas and another was Charles who at one time was sheriff of the county.
535
SAMUEL CHAMBERLAINE
day, and is yet spoken of as Squire Ungle, and it has been his ill fortune to be remembered rather for his faults than for his merits; so each suc- ceeding generation, whether justly or unjustly, cannot now be known, has planted commemorative flowers upon his grave which are neither beautiful nor fragrant. He was born in England, January 23, 1670. Nothing is known of his early life, nor the date of his coming to Mary- land. The first mention of him that has been discovered is in the records of the provincial council of August 1693, when his deposition respecting some treasonable words and acts of Col. Peter Sayer, a Jacobite and Roman Catholic, alleged to have been uttered at the public house of John Pope in Oxford, is preserved. From the deposition of another person, in the same case, it is to be inferred that Mr. Ungle was also a Jacobite, if not a Catholic, for he joined Col. Sayer and others in drink- ing the health of King James. In the following year he is mentioned as one of those who took up lots in the newly erected town of Oxford, where he was a merchant. He intermarried with the Popes, who did not disdain keeping a tavern, though they were people of substance, and after his marriage he took up his residence at Plain-Dealing, con- tinuing his business of merchant, the union of planting and trading being "common" at the time. Increasing wealth and good social connections both secured by his fortunate marriage if they were not enjoyed before, soon brought those honors civil and political, which were eagerly sought for and were the distinctive privileges of the gentry, or aristocracy of the county. In 1699 (see Biog. An. No. I, p. 97) his name appears among those of the Justices of the Peace of the county and continued to appear year by year until his death, except when he was holding other offices which debarred him from the Commission. He was sometimes a jus- tice of the quorum, which indicates the possession of some legal knowl- edge. It is known that he acted occasionally as legal attorney. In 1704 he was high sheriff of the county, an honorable and lucrative place, which he held until 1707, when he was succeeded by Daniel Sherwood. In the year 1714 he was appointed treasurer of the Eastern Shore, an office he probably held in 1720 and possibly later. In 1716 he was again appointed high sheriff of the county, and was succeeded in 1718 by one of his name Charles Ungle. In 1721 he was appointed deputy naval officer for the port of Oxford, in the Pocomoke District, and this office as well as that of justice he held to the time of his death in 1727. It may be mentioned that he was one of the Commissioners for laying off the town of Oxford. In October 1707 he was elected by the people one of the burgesses or delegates for Talbot county in the lower House
536
THE WORTHIES OF TALBOT
of Assembly with Col. Nicholas Lowe, Col. Thomas Smithson and Mr. Thomas Robins, gentlemen of the first character and station, as his associates. He served in the General Assembly until 1716, and during the years 1714 and 1715 he was speaker of the lower house. In 1720 he was again elected to the Assembly and again chosen speaker. While holding this honorable position he died in 1727. A special election was held and Mr. George Robins was elected to fill his place as delegate from Talbot. From this it is evident that Mr. Ungle, during his life and up to his death, possessed the respect and confidence of the governing powers of Maryland, and also of his fellow citizens of Talbot. The impu- tations which posterity placed upon his memory seem to owe their origin rather to superstition than any well established facts-to a belief that violent and sudden calamities are the executed judgments of a higher power for moral offences, known or unknown-a belief once more generally entertained than now, though not yet dead, nor likely to die, as long as law is thought to be the expression of a supreme will, and men continue to confound sequences and causes. Very little is known of the private life of Mr. Ungle, but we know enough to be sure that it was not a model of decorous morality-that it was not entirely exemplary; but who shall say it was worse than that of men of his sta- tion and times. All the evil that can be said of him with certainty is that he was more than convivial when among men-sometimes indulging in wine to excess. It is probable, that when among women he was more than gallant-sometimes incontinent. It is very safe to say that when among sea-faring men and men of the ruder sort, by whom he was surrounded, his language was more than intense-sometimes profane. These were the vices of his age, gross but open. He would not, if he could, have robbed a bank or wrecked a railroad. He would not have "stuffed" ballot boxes or taken money from the lobby, if there had then been ballot boxes and lobbies. Possibly, merchant as he was, he would not have cornered the market, though engrossing and rebating were sufficiently common then to call for legislation. These are the vices of this age-secret, sly and almost proper-certainly not violating decency.
In the old mansions of this county, of much pretension, the hall or entrance room was architecturally the most important apartment, upon which the greatest expense and labor was bestowed. Around its sides broad stairways leading to the upper rooms, with ballusters low and massive, as much for show as safety, were squarely built in the style of Queen Ann lately revived. From any part of these stair-
537
SAMUEL CHAMBERLAINE
ways one could look sheer down without obstruction to the lowest floor. Such was the hall at Plain Dealing, and such it remained until about the middle of the present century when it was demolished by the present owner, Captain E. L. F. Hardcastle, to make room for the more modern structure he has erected. Tradition has transmitted that in one of his convivial seasons, overcome with wine, Squire Ungle, who was the great man of the neighborhood, while moving along the stairway fell head- long over the low ballusters to the floor below, and, in common phrase, broke his neck, at the same time receiving a bleeding wound. He was taken up dead. His sudden death, from the attending circumstances, had additional horrors, and left a strangely abiding impression. When lifted from the floor some spots of blood were seen which are said to have made a stain that was visible for more than a hundred years, and was pointed out to visitors at the old mansion as possessing a mystic permanency which no solvent water, detergent soap or erasing sand, though well applied, could obliterate.
When Mr. Samuel Chamberlaine settled in Oxford he had not to oc- cupy the position and suffer the embarrassments of a stranger, for the long commercial intercourse of the father and sons with the people of Maryland, and particularly of this county, had them well and favor- ably known to most of the substantial citizens of Talbot. Thus intro- duced, he soon won their confidence and esteem by an exhibition of those traits that mark strong and virtuous characters. Making no preten- tion to those qualities that excite the wonder, admiration or reverence of men, he was content to possess those of the well trained and honor- able merchant-to be upright, judicious, courageous, decisive, punctual, diligent and methodical. That he was all of these his great success in trade attests. A kinsman says of him: "He stood first in the county as an honorable, honest and worthy man, of unimpeachable character." He soon became one of the wealthiest men of the county,4 though fortunate marriages may have aided in building his great fortune, there is no doubt but equally fortunate mercantile adventures were prime factors of his financial prosperity. As was the custom of his day in Mary- land he united planting with trade, shipping his own tobacco and other products with those received in his dealings with his less opulent neigh- bors to England, and receiving in return those articles of comfort and luxury which the province could not supply. His planting was upon a large scale, as his great estate in land and negroes attests. There is
4 The Rent Roll of the Lord Proprietary shows that Mr. C. in 1755 paid quit rents upon 5338 acres of land.
538
THE WORTHIES OF TALBOT
no reason to doubt that he was as successful in agriculture as in com- merce, using, as he did, in the former those faculties of sound judgment and carrying with him those habits of orderly management that he was accustomed to exercise in the latter. One of his most conspicuous traits, as well as commendable, was his precision and carefulness in matters of business of whatsoever kind, private or public, which con- trasted remarkably with the negligence and looseness common in new countries and conspicuous among the people among whom he had set- tled. As an evidence of this, it is said he left behind him a mass of papers, arranged and filed with regularity and care of a merchant's clerk, many of which, relating to public business, had they been pre- served, would have proved to be a source of valuable historical informa- tion of colonial and inter-colonial affairs during a long period of time.
But Mr. Chamberlaine's private business did not so far monopolize his attention or absorb his interest as to prevent his participation actively and earnestly in public affairs, municipal, county and provincial. Set- tling at Oxford, in Maryland, he identified himself with the community in which he was placed, and all that concerned its prosperity and well being became matters of personal importance with him, and often of personal solicitude. A gentleman of his position and character could hardly escape the notice of the governing powers of the commonwealth, so we find that at a court held November 3, 1724, a new commission was produced from the Lord Proprietary appointing nine of the most respectable citizens of the county justices of the peace. Of these he was one. The position for which he was thus designated was more important and honorable than that of those officers of the present day who bear that title, and was filled by men of very different character and condition. It is evident from the records of the Court, still pre- served in the clerk's office of this county, that Mr. Chamberlaine was not as constant an attendant upon court as his associates, for reasons not now explicable, nor was his commission as regularly renewed for equally obscure causes; yet his name occasionally appears down to the time when he was invited to become a member of the Governor's council, after which he was authorized by virtue of his office, to act as a justice of the peace, or county judge, when present, as he was also a judge of the Court of Appeals and Errors, thus uniting, under a system, displeasing to our ideas of expediency, executive, legislative and judicial functions. All of these functions Mr. Chamberlaine continued to perform, regu- larly or occasionally until his resignation of his seat in the council in 1768.
539
SAMUEL CHAMBERLAINE
After the death of Mr. Ungle in 1727 Mr. Chamberlaine succeeded to his place of naval officer at Oxford. The duties of this position, for which his commercial education and his acquaintance with the business of the port, entirely fitted him, were discharged with his characteristic fidelity and precision until 1748, when they were resigned to his son, Mr. Thomas Chamberlaine, who was appointed in his stead. A memo- randum states that John Leeds was appointed naval officer in 1766. The account books kept during the incumbency of these two naval officers, and of the second Samuel Chamberlaine, are really valuable documents to the local historian, for they give light upon the social conditions and the industrial employments of the people of this county. They record the names of the merchants, of the captains, and of the ships trading in the waters of Talbot and the adjacent counties, and they indicate the character of the outward as well as the inward cargoes, and the ports of entry and departure.5
At a general election held September 10, 1728, Mr. Chamberlaine was chosen by the qualified voters of Talbot county to be one of their delegates in the lower House of Assembly; and his seat was held until 1732. There is no evidence that he ever again was a candidate for any elective office: but in the year last named he was appointed to a most responsible position with regard to the rights of the proprietary and the territorial limits of the province of Maryland. A conflict of title under their respective charters between William Penn and Lord Baltimore, after the contentions of many years had not been adjusted; but in 1732 an agreement had been reached by the contending parties, by which it was determined that a provisional boundary line should be laid down, that should be observed by the authorities of both contestants until a final adjudication had been made and announced by the British Courts of Chancery, to which appeal had been made for the establishment of the respective rights of the Proprietaries. Commissioners were ap- pointed by the governers, Ogle of Maryland and Thomas of Pennsyl- vania to supervise the survey. Those for this province were Col. Levin Gale and Mr. Samuel Chamberlaine, and the work of the survey was begun in 1739. It had progressed as far west as the Susquehannah river when it was interrupted by the enforced absence of Col. Gale and the refusal of Mr. Chamberlaine to proceed farther without the pres- ence of his associated commissioner. The Pennsylvania commis- sioners proceeded to run the line westward. It may be well enough to
5 These books have been deposited with the Maryland Historical Society, by Mr. James Lloyd Chamberlaine of Baltimore.
540
THE WORTHIES OF TALBOT
say that the controversy respecting this boundary line was not finally settled until 1760 nor the survey completed until 1768. Talbot county was represented in the new commission by Col. Edward Lloyd, and the supervision of the work of the surveyors, Messrs. Mason and Dixon, was committed, in part, to Mr. John Leeds, also of this county, for which task, by reason of his most respectable attainments in mathematics and astronomy, no one in the province, in the opinion of Governor Sharpe, was better fitted and in this opinion Mr. Chamberlaine undoubtedly united.
The abilities which Mr. Chamberlaine had displayed, both in the management of his own private affairs and in the conduct of those of a public nature that had been committed to his care, coupled with his large wealth, his high social rank and his pure personal character were such as to give him a kind of title to the most eminent station in the proprietary government; and this title seems to have been recognized by Governor Ogle who in 1740 appointed him one of his Lordship's Honorable Council. A seat in the council entitled him to a seat upon the bench of the Provincial Court, and accordingly he is mentioned in the records as occupying that high station in 1741. He took his seat in the council on the 22nd of April of that year, having associated with him in that body two of his fellow citizens of Talbot county, Col. Ed- ward Lloyd of "Wye House," and Col. Matthew Tilghman Ward, of "Rich Neck." What opinions he held upon questions of provincial politics it is now difficult to determine as we get little light from official records, and as before mentioned, his private papers, which in this connection would have been valuable, were entirely destroyed. But as a seat in the council was the gift of the governor or of him in whose stead the governor stood, and as the occupant of that seat was expected to reflect the sen- timents of those who appointed him, and to be the guardian of the interests of the proprietary when they were in conflict with those of the people whose exponents were the members of the Lower House of As- sembly, it is inferable that Mr. Chamberlaine's opinions were in accord with at least a majority of the council or upper house, and therefore may be approximately learned by a study of the political movements in the province, as they are related in works of general state history.6
6 It may not be useless or uninteresting to quote from the Orders and Instruc- tions, Powers and Authorities from Frederick, Lord Baltimore, to his Council commissioned in 1753. The 4th Article thus reads: "You must strictly act con- sonant to my Royal Charter from King Charles the First, granted by his said Majesty to my noble Ancestor Cecilius, Lord Proprietary and Lord Baron of
541
SAMUEL CHAMBERLAINE
Before Mr. Chamberlaine had taken his seat at the council board "the dissensions about the proprietary revenue, between the lower house of Assembly and the Governors, which endured to the downfall of the proprietary government" had begun. Nothing is hazarded in the statement that he supported the claims of Lord Baltimore, which were regarded by popular branch of the government as unjust. Among his first duties as councillor was the enlistment of volunteers, under a royal requisition, for the war with Spain which had just broken out. These soldiers made a part of the ill-fated expedition of Admiral Vernon against Carthagena in Colombia, South America, in which many perished miserably from the climate and service. We find that he was much interested in protecting the rights of those Indians who still remained within the lower counties of the Eastern Shore, for by an order of council of May 30, 1747, he with William Thomas, also of Talbot, was appointed a commission to enquire into the grievances of the Indians of Dorchester county. These gentlemen met the Indian chiefs at Cambridge on the 8th of March, 1748, and in their report to the council they sustain the charge made against Philemon Lecompte of cutting timber from the Indian reservation, but exonerated Mrs. Elizabeth Trippe of trespassing upon their land. It is traditional that Mr. Chamberlaine was especially active during the French war, laboring assiduously to direct public opinion in favor of a vigorous prosecution of the contest for supremacy upon this continent, and holding correspondence with leading charac- ters in the other provinces, so as to secure concert of action. It is said the communications that were exchanged with these distinguished persons were carefully filed, and in existence down to a comparatively recent date, but now destroyed. There is something more than tradi- tion to convince us that he was so earnest in his advocacy of the war, and the measures adopted for its prosecution, that he could act the part of complete independence of proprietary influence, for at a meeting of the council held May 12, 1756, the Governor asked the opinion of the board, whether "in case a bill should pass both houses, laying a tax on all his Lordship's manor lands and all other land for which he shall
Baltimore. You are to uphold and maintain the said Charles Royal Prerogatives, Rights, Powers and Authorities so granted to the Reserving and well-being of my just Rights and the true good rule of my Government, both in church and state as by law established, doing equal and impartial justice unto all Persons, his most sacred Majesty's subjects and my faithful tenants committed by my powers to your care.
Council Records of date."
542
THE WORTHIES OF TALBOT
receive any rent, this board would advise the Governor to pass the same." The council decided unanimously it would so advise, Col. Edward Lloyd voting that he would "in case the bill is practicable to be performed" and Mr. Chamberlaine that he would, without qualifica- tion. Of his relation to events that were precursory to the revolution we know as little as that to events more remote. We have no direct or positive intelligence of how he stood affected towards the Stamp Act, though the condemnation of this measure, in Maryland as in all the colonies, was so general as well as so vehement, it is hardly probable that Englishman as he was and therefore inclined to submit to royal or parliamentary authority, and indisposed as he was, as sworn councillor of the Lord Proprietary, to jeopard any of his rights, by resistance to even an obnoxious law, he ventured to oppose the popular furor. Mr. Chamberlaine did not live to share in the fervors of the controversy aroused by the Proclamation and Vestry Act, which succeeded to that of the Stamp Act; but as his son, Mr. Samuel Chamberlaine, Jr., was a strenuous advocate of the doctrine that it is the duty of the state to support the ministers of an established church, we should not err, prob- ably, if it be assumed that he reflected the sentiments of his father; and that the son was, later, a non-juror, so the father opposed all meas- ures leading to resistance to the imperial government, and especially to the independence of the colonies-questions already debated. He doubtless saw the drift of affairs, and we may suppose that his last days were not made more serene by anticipations of the glories of the great republic then approaching the time of its birth, but were clouded and perturbed by apprehensions of social disorder and political revolution. He held his position at the council board until the year 1769, when he resigned;7 and though the reasons he assigned for this step, namely, age and infirmities, were the most potent there is little doubt that hear- ing the distant thunder he anticipated the great storm soon to break over these colonies, and sought the shelter of private station. His resignation was followed by that of Mr. Lloyd in the same year, and it will be noted by students of Maryland history that it was the year of the installation of the Hon. Robert Eden, the last proprietary gov- ernor, as well as of the retirement of Governor Sharpe, long the execu- tive superior and intimate friend of the subject of this sketch.
As little as is known of Mr. Samuel Chamberlaine, the elder, there is
7 But Mr. John Bozman Kerr says he was in the council during thirty-four years, so that resigning in 1769 his commission must have borne the date of 1735 and not 1740 as stated in the text.
543
SAMUEL CHAMBERLAINE
sufficient to justify us in believing that he was not impressed with reli- gious convictions of the same depth nor with religious feelings of the same intensity as those of his son of the same name; yet trained up as he was under the teachings of the established Church of England, and having the example of his kinsman, good Bishop Nelson of Sodor and Man held up before him, it is not surprising to find him soon after his settle- ment at Oxford cooperating with other citizens of repute and especially with Parson Maynadier in the work of St. Peters parish. In the years 1725 and 1726 he was elected one of the vestry of this parish, but after this last date he apparently withdrew from all official connection . with the church. He aided in the erection of a new parish church by contributing of his means and by his management, being apparently the fiscal agent of the vestry.8
In the year 1735 he became a resident of St. Michaels' parish by his removal to Plain Dealing, and therefore came under the pastoral care of the Reverend Henry Nicols, of happy memory. It is evident that he continued his refusal to take any part in parochial affairs, for his name nowhere appears in connection with the church. This abstention from what many consider a duty and others a privilege of one so prominent as Mr. Chamberlaine is remarkable and is to this day inexplicable. Conjecture as to the cause might do his memory injustice; but it may be remembered that there are men in the world leading decorous lives perhaps imbued with sincere piety, who recoil from any such public expression of religious opinion or feeling as the assumption of any ecclesiastical functions, or even the formation of any ecclesiastical con- nection would involve; for having established in their own minds a high standard of fitness for such duties which they have never been able fully to realize in their own conduct, they are too conscientious to violate their own scruples to satisfy the demands of others. Mr.
8 In the possession of a member of the family there is a book of Mr. C. con- taining receipts, and among these are three relating to the building of a "Chapell at Oxford"-one for the making and laying of bricks and the other two for plank and scantling for the same structure. These receipts have been interpreted as signifying that in the year 1728 a church edifice was built within the town of Ox- ford, and that Samuel Chamberlaine was active in promoting its building. As there is not in the church record the remotest reference to any such chapel, nor in any other record, it may be regarded as certain that these receipts referred to the new parish church, called White Marsh which was put up at or about this date, the old one or first on the same site having gone to decay. This church of 1728 has also disappeared, and the brick church still standing, but in ruins, is of much later construction.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.